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wst

the web standard tools subproject

Project Vision

The project vision is to extend eclipse
platform with support for building multi-tier Web applications. The
project will grow the community of eclipse users, and grow the
community of developers that create Web applications based on Open
Standards and Technologies. In this way, we will help make eclipse the
industry standard tool integration platform for development based on
Open Standards and Technologies. The project must preserve the eclipse
value proposition by providing integration, ease-of-use, function, and
"coolness". Web artifacts must be first class citizens with respect to
the capabilities that eclipse users expect. Servers must be first class
execution environments, including both Open and Commercial
implementations, therefore encourage support of eclipse by server
vendors.

This subproject will provide support for integrating Web
servers into
Eclipse as first-class execution environments for Web applications.
This support will include the ability to configure Web servers and
assocaite them with Web projects. Examplar tools for supporting popular
Open Source Web servers, such as Apache, are in scope.

The subproject will provide tools that directly support the
base standards and that are also extensible. For example, the HTML
editor will be extensible to support HTML-based template languages such
as PHP and JSP. While a JSP editor is in the scope of the JST
subproject, exemplar tools for popular Open Source languages such as
PHP are in scope.

The goal of this project is to provide both tools for
Web application developers and a platform for tool developers.

Goals for Project Structure and Web Core Model

These structures will provide common facilities required by
most Web tool builders. A common and flexible project model is required
as well as a common basis for web artifacts and editors. Our goals are:

Divide and Conquer: Lots of components, so divide the work
using the classical principle of hierarchy

Layer Build Dependencies: J2EE Standards builds on the Web
Standards, the Extensions build on the Standards

The structure of software reflects the structure of the
organization that built it: We are building a platform and need to
validate our API.

Web Core Model

This is a set of frameworks, and models, which provide the
necessary abstractions and APIs to work and develop with Web Tools, and
to build IDEs and tools to support these activities. WCM is not just an
adaptation of language specification, but it will focus on the
additional requirements of developers and tool builders. WCM address at
a minimum the following areas:

Project Model

Development of Web applications is done in a variety of ways;
It can be divided across multiple related projects, or it can be
factored into one project that can host multiple artifacts. The core
Web project model will extend the eclipse project model and will have
intelligence to recognize and work with Web artifacts, and support the
build activities related to these artifacts.

Editor Model

The Editor Model will offer developers a set of APIs to access
Web models, participate in build and refactoring activities, and allow
them to easily create various text, and graphical editors. Support for
a Content based selection of Editors will be integrated into the Editor
Model. This model will encompass editors in a broad sense, i.e.
editors, validators and document generators for a wide range of
standard languages corresponding to Web Artifacts taken into account.

Web Artifacts

These models will represent Web standard models. They will at
minimum include or reference existing models for:

Server Models

Servers are first class execution environments, they provide
the runtime environment, where the web artifacts are tested, deployed
and executed. Server models must be flexible to accommodate open and
commercial implementations.

Support different applications servers and server versions

Start, stop and restart servers

Run server processes in the Eclipse debugger

Package, deploy, remove, import, export, accessing/testing
modules

Extensible framework for server administration

Web Standard Tools

Web Standard Tools will provide extensible tools for the
development of Web Applications and support development, testing and
debugging with various servers. The following tools will be made
available: